Harris County judges vote next week on creating new mental health court

[Harris County] criminal district court judges will vote whether to approve a detailed plan for a new “mental-health court,” a program that promises to cut crime, take a humane stance toward mental illness and save taxpayer money all at the same time. If the judges vote yes — and if Harris County commissioners then budget money for the program — the court could begin operation June 1.

The plan, created by 184th State District Court Judge Jan Krocker, a Republican, and more than a hundred mental-health stakeholders, would work like this: If charged with a non-violent felony, someone diagnosed with a significant cognitive impairment or mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and the like) would quickly be offered a choice: regular court or mental-health court. Defendants not competent to make the choice aren't eligible; those defendants are either sent to a state hospital or medicated in hopes that they become competent to stand trial.

Staffed by a judge, lawyers and caseworkers trained to deal with mental illness, mental-health court would be far less adversarial than regular courts. Both the prosecution and defense would agree that the goal is for the defendant to successfully complete the treatment plan prescribed by the court's psychiatrist, including mental-health treatment and anything else, such as drug-abuse counseling, health care or job training, deemed necessary to straighten out the defendant's tangled life. Court social workers would help find housing and health care.

And the court's judge would monitor the defendant's progress — meeting with him or her every week, if necessary — and could punish failures to comply with jail time.

Travis County's mental health court appears to be having success, so hopefully the new one in Harris will, too. The biggest barrier to expansion in Houston, says the Chronicle, may be a lack of community based treatment resources:

The Harris County proposal suggests starting small in 2010, sending 26 percent of a narrowly defined group of eligible defendants — about 200 a year — to the new mental-health court. More than that, notes the planning team, would overwhelm the already strained patchwork of social services that provide support for Texas' mentally ill. The court, after all, has to be able to refer its defendants somewhere for help.

Stronger probation methods and problem solving courts seem tailor-made for so-called "frequent flier" defendants who are likely to wind up on the mental health docket, but only if community-based services are adequately supported. Some have been incarcerated dozens of times, so it's not like jailing them is keeping the public from interacting with them. But their past interactions with the jail, as the county's largest mental health provider, nobody ever helped them how to control the underlying illness under supervised conditions where they're held accountable for things like staying on their meds and keeping a job. Instead, probationers were left on their own to sink or swim.

The shortage of services isn't just a problem in H-Town. The public health system has gotten so used to treating mental illness in county jails that community-based resources have atrophied, even though they're cheaper and in most instances more effective. Simply creating a new court docket won't help in the long run if the service shortage isn't addressed, but perhaps the court can also be an effective advocate to communicate with the commissioners court what resources are needed to manage this large subpopulation of offenders that soaks up a vastly disproportionate share of criminal justice resources.

"I always tell people interested in these issues that your blog is the most important news source, and have had high-ranking corrections officials tell me they read it regularly."

- Scott Medlock, Texas Civil Rights Project

"a helluva blog"

- Solomon Moore, NY Times criminal justice correspondent

"Congrats on building one of the most read and important blogs on a specific policy area that I've ever seen"

- Donald Lee, Texas Conference of Urban Counties

GFB "is a fact-packed, trustworthy reporter of the weirdness that makes up corrections and criminal law in the Lone Star State" and has "shown more naked emperors than Hans Christian Andersen ever did."

-Attorney Bob Mabry, Conroe

"Grits really shows the potential of a single-state focused criminal law blog"

- Corey Yung, Sex Crimes Blog

"I regard Grits for Breakfast as one of the most welcome and helpful vehicles we elected officials have for understanding the problems and their solutions."

Tommy Adkisson,Bexar County Commissioner

"dude really has a pragmatic approach to crime fighting, almost like he’s some kind of statistics superhero"

- Rob Patterson, The Austin Post"Scott Henson's 'Grits for Breakfast' is one of the most insightful blogs on criminal justice issues in Texas."

- Texas Public Policy Foundation

"Nobody does it better or works harder getting it right"

David Jennings, aka "Big Jolly"

"I appreciate the fact that you obviously try to see both sides of an issue, regardless of which side you end up supporting."

Kim Vickers,Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and EducationGrits for Breakfast "has probably broken more criminal justice stories than any TX reporter, but stays under the radar. Fascinating guy."

Maurice Chammah,The Marshall Project"unrestrained and uneducated"

John Bradley,Former Williamson County District Attorney, now former Attorney General of Palau

"our favorite blog"

- Texas District and County Attorneys Association Twitter feed"Scott Henson ... writes his terrific blog Grits for Breakfast from an outhouse in Texas."